Wednesday 31/12/08

Pretty much all my favourite bands released CDs this year, with only good results. The surprisingly good albums were by Less Than Jake and Foxboro Hot Tubs, Green Day’s newest side project. The unsurprisingly good records were by The Living End and Butch Walker.

Less Than Jake had been on the slide as far as studio albums went, but that was down to record label pressure. They ended up being released from Sire Records and set up their own label to release their newest CD, ‘GNV FLA’, which was something of a return to form. They’ll never top ‘Hello Rockview’ but as long as they release solid music I’ll keep going to see them (13 times and counting now).

The Foxboro Hot Tubs album, ‘Stop Drop and Roll!!!’ was a mystery. Green Day don’t bash albums out every 18 months (it was 4 years between Warning and American Idiot and it’s been over 4 years since then) so I’d almost forgotten about the band I listened to fairly continuously between the ages of 14 and 18. Just messing around drunk in the studio, the result is something that should have been released without the anonymity of an alias. This is a mighty fine homage to 60s rock and roll and it only bodes well for the new GD album which is due (at long last) next year.

The Living End and Butch Walker released expectedly good albums, despite both changing musical styles to do so. The Living End went proper hard rock, riffy and hooky, after Chris Cheney left the band citing lack of enthusiasm towards music. He wrote ‘How Do We Know’ and rediscovered his love for pushing the creative boundaries, which led to a whole album of songs that have sent the band in a bizarre 70s heavy metal direction. The only bad thing is that I had to import the CD from Australia, because no record label in the UK wants anything to do with TLE for some reason. Walker’s new CD, ‘Sycamore Meadows’, was also made after a troubled time during which his house burned down, resulting in the loss of all the songs he’d ever written. Turning this enormous negative into a positive, he created a beautiful album that turned me into a bigger fan of softer, acoustic music generally.

Other mentionable albums that I’ve enjoyed have been the by the King Blues, Death Cab for Cutie (which surprised me) and the weird as hell ‘A Band In Hope’ by the Matches.

As much as these new albums I’ve gotten into music that has been acclaimed for years but I’d never bothered listening to before, particularly stuff from the 80s, a decade I was fairly certain had nothing going for it in terms of musical legacy, save for Michael Jackson and Stray Cats. Happy to be proved wrong, I went out and bought albums by the Pretenders and Joe Jackson. Their new wave style isn’t something I would’ve embraced a couple of years ago but it’s fun music and that was enough for me. Plus I could play it fucking loud without my parents whinging.

I also started listening to Muse. I didn’t, and still don’t, like Black Holes and Revelations as it’s an overblown record that just comes out sounding messy. But Absolution is, in my opinion, a masterpiece. It’s a CD that I have to listen to from beginning to end to get the full effect from. The songs are good on their own but they fit like a sexy musical puzzle when put together. The same goes for Queens of The Stone Age’s 2002 record ‘Songs For The Deaf’. Acclaimed at the time, there’s no reason for me not to have paid attention to it before but I didn’t and it’s only now that I appreciate it for what it is.

Even if I’m 5 years (or 25 years) behind the popular musical scene I will still get into this stuff eventually. There were probably CDs released this year that I will start enjoying come 2013.

Sunday 21/12/08

I won a tenner on the lottery this week. I’ve probably spent half a dozen times more than that since I entered the world of gambling, when I decided £2 a week was worth it. I don’t expect, rightly so, to win anything when I take part in it and all I’m doing is buying some hope. Hope and wishing is sometimes all you can do when life kicks you in the proverbial nuts (if somebody could send me a proverb where nuts are referred to) to keep you from complete meltdown. People do say ‘you buy your own luck’ so I’m hoping that me taking this saying as literally as possible will give me a greater chance of actually getting some.

I wasn’t so lucky last night. We considered £22 for a cab home from Maidenhead offensive so it was decided that we would walk home which is6 miles through fields, the eerily quiet Cookham and up the so-called hill (but would probably be better described as a cliff face) up to Flackwell Heath. After some vain attempts to hitchhike, where our outstretched thumbs looked more like signs of approval than displays of desperation, we trudged slowly but steadily home and I eventually crossed the threshold at the ‘not so much very late as very early’ time of 4am, nearly 3 hours after we had left the pub for the taxi office. I’ve done the walk a couple of other times and knew what to expect (pain and tedium once the drunken high wears off and you can only wish for sleep) so I accept no sympathy.

I was lucky to be drunk really. I’m sure that my untied laces (because it’s trendy) and odd walking gait (because I probably have rickets on account of not drinking milk) can’t have done my knees any good (the physiotherapy in the summer did nothing to fix them) so the anaesthetic properties of Foster’s sufficiently numbed the aching. Let’s face it, it can’t have been invented because it tastes good and things that are good for you often taste like crap.

Having only had about half a dozen drinks all evening, I wasn’t totally wrecked and was surprised when I woke up at 11 o’clock this morning to find myself with an absolutely splitting headache. Putting it down to excessive dehydration I went to the bathroom sink to drink. After feebly lapping water with my head upside down below the tap I was promptly sick (a watery ‘didn’t eat enough last night’ kind of sick, but just short of producing bile) into the toilet next to the sink. ‘Fuck it’ I thought, and went back to my room to sleep. I woke up again at 3pm, headache free and actually quite bouncy and energised. My body doesn’t quite feel right, though, and I’m quite drained. That said, it still wouldn’t be worth me spending over £20 just to avoid it.

Maybe if I carry on with the lottery I’ll eventually be able to afford a whole taxi ride home.

Wednesday 17/12/08

On Sunday, I went to the new Wembley for the third time this year. Despite being the most expensive stadium in the history of the world ever, it’s not actually that nice. Compared to some genuinely glorious structures, such as the modern art masterpiece that is the Allianz Arena or the (and I’m biased here) beautiful curves around the Emirates Stadium, the arch seems a little pathetic when you actually see it in person. It just looks like an out of place bit of scaffolding that the builders left there after the invoice was paid.

A venue wont be the make or break of a good event, but it can certainly make a good time so much better. When I saw Green Day at Milton Keynes, they played to every single person in that bowl. Now that’s more the band’s doing than the location itself but it wouldn’t have been half as impressive if they’d performed in the Oxford Academy, which was, the last time I went (and wasn’t even called that), a crappy hole above a pub.

Like the Oxford venue, the London Astoria 2 (or Mean Fiddler as it briefly was) possessed the ability to knock down a 10/10 gig to a 9 purely because it seemingly wasn’t designed for human use. The sides of the dancefloor were a foot lower than the middle third, which meant that anyone standing at the sides, far from the stage, would not be able to see anything. And this wasn’t a gradual change, there was just a big middle section that you had to step onto (or fall off if you even thought about dancing there) to get a decent view.

I saw probably 10 gigs at that place and they were all dragged down by the poor audience area, or the sound engineering in the case of Nashville Pussy who had to leave for 20 minutes in the middle of their show because of a power cut onstage. Yes, the LA2 was a pretty crappy place, but unfortunately I was effectively forced there as my favourite bands would often play there. I saw Less Than Jake there 5 days running (and I missed one because of illness). But they wont in the future, I’m happy to say, as the whole building is being knocked down early next year.

I’m less happy to say that this building was also home, as you might expect, to the London Astoria where I’m not sure I’ve seen so many good bands play. Last year I saw Madness play a marvellous intimate (for them) set there. The Astoria, unlike it’s neighbour downstairs, the Astoria 2, has as good an all round view as you’re likely to get. I’ve been at the front barrier singing along to the Donnas, at the back gawping at the ability of Rancid’s Matt Freeman or just bouncing along at the side to any Less Than Jake song, who I’ve seen at at least half a dozen venues but never as good as at the Astoria.

Forgetting the obsession with LTJ, I will miss the Astoria when it’s gone. The upstairs venue because there aren’t many attractive settings for live music that have great acoustics and the downstairs venue because it’ll mean I’ll have to travel further than Tottenham Court Road to be slightly underwhelmed by a band I like.

Sunday 07/12/08

‘Tis the season to be jolly, unless you’re a miserable, cynical bastard who can’t stand the gaudy fakeness of it all. Probably 5% of the people in the Christmas ‘celebrating’ world actually enjoy the time, and they all work as accountants for department stores (and even they’ll be struggling to swallow their turkey as their facial muscles spasm, crying about the non-existant Christmas bonus they received). Anyone else who gets excited about it is either a child or has the mental capacity of one. Even a few days off wont cheer you up, as they’re not spent chilling on a beach in Hawaii but spent wasted either in front of the telly or down the pub.

It seems something about Christmas just fucks me off, unless it’s a combination of various offending things:

- There is little worse than Christmas music. This was made perfectly clear while in Asda on Friday. Slade were a shit band who released a pop song that had a theme. Luckily for them, that theme has kept Noddy Holder in retarded hats for 35 years. Only Brian Setzer can record a good Christmas tune, and fortunately he’s made a few of them. So good they are, musically, that I will happily listen to ‘Hey Santa’ by the Brian Setzer Orchestra in the middle of July if the mood takes me. Who listens to love songs only around Valentine’s Day? A good song is a good song, and if you can wait 11 months before listening to it then you probably don’t hold the music in particularly high esteem.

- I don’t hold much regard for tradition. If tradition was so great then slavery would never have been abolished and we’d still have a 3rd rate English manager for our national football team. As a result I have never seen a Queens speech nor wait eagerly by my set for the other important event in the Western Yuletide calendar, the Coca Cola Christmas advert. Big frigging deal. Hold on, Kerry Katona’s adverising Iceland, quick, press record on the Sky+, the kids will wanna see this. After I find someone to have kids with, of course.

- Since I got a job I’ve no need for gifts either. The rest of the year I’m buying every piece of crap I could want anyway (rarely used Xbox 360, drumkit and iPod to name but three) and there’s little that a novelty tie that plays a ringtoney version of Jingle Bells could do to keep me awake on Christmas Eve. If I want FIFA 09, I’ll buy chuffing well buy it myself (and I have).

/end rant